Wednesday, June 9, 2010

In case you missed it, our sister state South Carolina just keeps getting crazier. In primary elections on Tuesday, a jobless military veteran who raised no funds and put up no campaign website plus our source says he has a pending felony charge (AP confirms it, reporting that he felony charges for allegedly showing obscene online photos to a University of South Carolina student. The pending charges carry a possible five-year jail term.) won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. senate seat held by Republican Jim DeMint. And he won with 60 percent of the vote!

His name is Alvin Greene. He's 32 and was phantom-like during his campaign. He surprised the S.C. Democratic leadership in March when he walked into the state Democratic Party headquarters with a personal check for $10,400 to pay his filing fee. Democratic Party chair Carol Fowler told him he'd have to have a campaign account. So he left, set up an account and came back with a campaign check. She said she asked him if it was the best use of his money seeing as how he was unemployed. But he said he wanted to become South Carolina's U.S. senator.

Well, he closer to the goal now - though no one expects him to beat DeMint.

There's some speculation that he only won the primary because South Carolina has an open primary - meaning you can choose which party's primary you vote in, regardless of your party affiliation. Some speculate that Republicans voted for Greene since he was less competition than four-term state lawmaker Vic Rawl, 64, who had raised about $186,000 - who Greene handily defeated to Rawls' amazement.

Fowler said this might have been the determining factor: People voted alphabetically - no lie. Our source said that was a likely factor. It was a very low-profile race so voters didn't have any opinion before entering the voting booth. The source also said because Greene was black and he possibly got most of the black vote.

About this blog

The Observer's editorial board cares deeply about Charlotte and the Carolinas, and has a problem with public officials who have forgotten that they report to citizens. Editorial page editor Taylor Batten and associate editors Peter St. Onge and Eric Frazier tackle politics and public policy issues locally, across the state and nation. Kevin Siers tackles those issues too in cartoons. Read their columns and biographical information on the CharlotteObserver.com Opinion page.